Comedy of errors – Run out with both the batsman scurrying
to the same crease !
Towards the end – ball hit towards deep cover – Kamindu Mendis
fumbled but recovered in time. Usman
Khan wanted the strike and Naseem Shah
too was running towards the striker – it was a competition between the
two. Third Umpire had to intervene to
rule Naseem Shah out as Usman had ground his bat !!
Often we spend time discussing worthless things – people are
so worried about the scenario of Pak making it to Semis !! Today 28th
Feb is a great day and we should be
hailing a genius from this motherland .. .. did WE ??.. . in a Nation where even Science projects have
been named after Nehru / Indira / Rajiv and not after great great Scientists –
do you know which place has Pincode 560093 ???
A major question in physics is the maximum size of a system
that can demonstrate quantum mechanical effects. This year’s (2025) Nobel Prize laureates conducted experiments
with an electrical circuit in which they demonstrated both quantum mechanical
tunnelling and quantised energy levels in a system big enough to be held in the
hand.
Quantum mechanics allows a particle to move straight through a barrier, using a process called tunnelling. As soon as large numbers of particles are involved, quantum mechanical effects usually become insignificant. The laureates’ experiments demonstrated that quantum mechanical properties can be made concrete on a macroscopic scale.
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis for their groundbreaking discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in electric circuits. Their experiments proved that quantum behavior can be observed in electrical systems large enough to be seen and held.
The Nobel Prize in Physics has been
awarded 119 times to 230 laureates between 1901 and 2025. John Bardeen
is the only laureate who has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics twice, in
1956 and 1972. Does that strike a chord?
Rhishard Llewellyn Jones (1865 – 1932) was a Welsh
professor of physics who worked at the Presidency College Madras and also
served as a director of the Madras Observatory. The man of this post was his
student ! Jones worked at Dulwich College and joined as
a professor of physics at the Presidency College, Madras in 1889. He received
an MA in 1893. At Madras he also served as Government Meteorologist from 1899.
In 1902, the man
joined Presidency College in Madras where his father had been
transferred to teach mathematics and physics. In 1904, he obtained a B.A.
degree from the University of Madras, where he stood first and won the gold
medals in physics and English. At age 18, while still a graduate student,
he published his first scientific paper on "Unsymmetrical diffraction
bands due to a rectangular aperture" in the British journal Philosophical
Magazine in 1906. He earned an M.A. degree from the same university with
highest distinction in 1907. Aware of his capacity, his physics teacher
Rhishard Llewellyn Jones insisted he continue research in England. Sadly,
the man was of poor health and was considered as a "weakling."
And was considered not healthy enough to withstand the harsh weathers of
England.
His was an illustrious
family. His father was a Maths & Physics teacher. His elder
brother joined the Indian Finance Service (now Indian Audit and Accounts
Service), the most prestigious government service in India. In no
condition to study abroad, our hero followed suit and qualified for the
Indian Finance Service achieving first position in the entrance examination in
1907. He was posted in Calcutta as Assistant
Accountant General where he developed acquaintance with Indian
Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), the first research institute
founded in India in 1876. In 1909, he was transferred to
Rangoon, British Burma to take up the position of currency officer.
After only a few months, he had to return to Madras as his father died from an
illness. He came back and was promoted to Accountant General
in 1911 and again posted to Calcutta. Not any story of a
successful bureaucrat ! - but that of a Great Scientist - Sir C.V.
Raman !
C. V. Raman was born in
Tiruchirapalli, to Tamil Brahmin parents, Chandrasekhara Ramanathan
Iyer and Parvathi Ammal. He was the second of eight siblings. Raman
discovered that when light traverses a transparent material, the deflected
light changes its wave-length and frequency. This phenomenon, a hitherto
unknown type of scattering of light, which they called "modified
scattering" was subsequently termed the Raman
effect or Raman scattering. Raman received the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery
and was the first Asian to receive a Nobel Prize in any branch of science.
CV Raman topped the
bachelor's degree examination of the University of Madras with honours in
physics from Presidency College at age 16. His first research paper, on
diffraction of light, was published in 1906. In 1917, he was appointed the
first Palit Professor of Physics by Ashutosh Mukherjee at the Rajabazar Science
College under the University of Calcutta. On his first trip to Europe, seeing
the Mediterranean Sea motivated him to identify the prevailing explanation for
the blue colour of the sea at the time, namely the reflected Rayleigh-scattered
light from the sky, as being incorrect. He founded the Indian Journal of
Physics in 1926. He moved to Bangalore in 1933 to become the first Indian
director of the Indian Institute of Science. He founded the Indian Academy of
Sciences the same year. He established the Raman Research Institute in 1948
where he worked to his last days.
The Raman effect was
discovered on 28 February
1928. The day is celebrated annually by the Government of India as the National Science Day. In 1954, the Government of
India honoured him with the first Bharat Ratna, its highest civilian award. He
later smashed the medallion in protest against Prime Minister Jawaharlal
Nehru's policies on scientific research.
Here is something extracted
from Nobel Prize web : Prize
motivation: “for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of
the effect named after him”
When light meets
particles that are smaller than the light’s wavelength, the light spreads in
different directions. This occurs, for example, when light
packets—photons—encounter molecules in a gas. In 1928 Venkata Raman discovered
that a small portion of the scattered light acquires other wavelengths than
that of the original light. This is because some of the incoming photons’
energy can be transferred to a molecule, giving it a higher level of energy.
Among other things, the phenomenon is used to analyze different types of
material.
Sir CV Raman was a great
personality – awards at least the ones pertaining to Physics must be named
after people like him but in our Nation, we have - Jawaharlal
Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR); Nehru Science Centre,
Mumbai; Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR); Indira Gandhi Science Complex / Planetarium
(Taramandal), Bihar; Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB),
Thiruvananthapuram .. .. and more
!!!!
.. .. and did you remember
him today .. .. if not, though late, let us celebrate and remember that great
Scientist, Nobel Laureate who brought glory to mother India. The Pincode mentioned at the start 560093 is CV Raman Nagar in
Bengaluru named after the great Scientist. It is a residential area near tech
hubs of Indira Nagar and Kaggadasapura.
